Rob.. spoke with Barry from Roastmasters / Willoughbys Coffee here is what he offered:

"As to temp I think the higher the temp the more of everything that is extracted - positive and negative qualities. There are so many different decafs that it makes no sense to generalize. A cleanly prepared water decaffeinated Sumatra would have different guidelines then some chemically processed brazil. In other words no rule of thumb that I see".

Thanks Joe. I have had some time to play and well I just taste decaf. I believe this is something I will have to start with the roast and work it from the ground up with cupping to get my taste buds on track with what improves the cup before I worry to much about exact brewing technique. I have been following Tom at Sweet Maria's work of trying to get better beans for sending out for water processing, I will keep high hopes that this will improve decaf and that I can roast it proper.

I have been brewing a lot of pots with 24 ounces of water, which produce about 21 - 22 ounces of coffee. Seems to be fine, using the same ratio of grounds to water as I use for 30 ounce, 36 ounce, or 40 ounce pots.

I've also brewed some 16 ounce pots, using two paper filters to slow the drip a little bit. I did some crude tests of water flow through the basket -- empty basket (no coffee), dump in 10 ounces of water, and time how long it takes to drip out. Not very scientific and I wasn't looking for extreme precision. There didn't seem to be much difference in flow rates between the gold filter and a single paper filter. Double paper filters slowed it down a little bit, but I wouldn't want to do that for anything but fairly small pots or you'll run into overflow problems.

BTW, the Brazen filter (paper or gold) dripped slower than any cone filter combo I tested -- Melitta with paper, Melitta with gold, or Hario with paper. It brewed stronger coffee with 16 ounces of water than the HARIO cone/paper filter and the same amount of grounds. That surprised me a little because I thought the cone might have an advantage for small batches. That's when I ran the crude water flow tests and found out that the Brazen flat filter actually flowed a little slower than the cone.

I THOUGHT I had kicked my bloom issue by grinding first, and then filling the resevoir and hitting start (hence, giving the beans 5-6 minutes of time post grind to decompress)........ Not so. Ends up my problems went away because I had switched bean origin! I think that the Brazen handles the bloom out of most coffees just fine. What I've discovered is a constant issue is Ethiopians! I have a few different ones that I've gotten from Sweet Maria's recently and when I switched back to one for this week, bam, problem returned. Over flowing the basket, hitting the brew head, etc....

At this point, I think ideally I do wish the Brazen had a taller brew basket to simply accomodate for it. If the goal is a 100% hands off brewing experience I don't think there's enough space for handle ALL coffee's. I've had these Ethiopians go over the basket even a week past the roast date! All the Brazen needs is another half inch to inch of vertical space.

On a positive note however I do believe I've found a great way to deal with it. I stole an idea from Netphilosopher....... COLD presoaking.

Load the fresh ground beans in the basket, fill the resevoir with water, do a 5 second pre-release of cold water in the basket and then hit start on the brew cycle. I have the minimum 15 second "presoak" programmed in (so effectively no hot presoak) and don't even come close to overflowing when I do this.

Sampled them side by side and got a bit less bitterness and astrigency out of the cold presoak method! This has me pretty excited actually. Netphilospher hypothosized that a cold pre-soak will expunge the CO2 while not starting the extraction process since the temp is too low. At the same time, since the soak water volume (5 seconds = about 50ml) is so low, it doesn't really affect final brew temp.

I'm going to go with this method for the next several batches and see how it goes but I'm pretty optimistic at this point. When I did my experimental brew I pulled out the basket to observe the bloom once the hot water first hit and it was cut by over 50% from a normal cycle. This means the beans are getting hit by more hot water sooner, and the total hot brew time is shorter vs a long 2 minute hot presoak.

I've tuned my cold soak technique over the week and have a method I really like now. I hit manual release -> start on the brazen, and then go about preparing my coffee grounds and basket. Once the basket is under the dispersion head I release about 8 second of water into the basket once the resevoir hits 120 degrees, then hit start and allow the brew cycle to complete normally (the minimum 15 second presoak programmed in, so effectively no presoak).

Today as an expirement I tried this on 30 minute post roast ethiopian (a origin that has given me endless bloom issues) and I had NO over flow on the basket. The cool (120) presoak produces a very slow moving bloom in the basket that dissipates a lot of the CO2, and since the temp is low, no bitterness comes from the slightly longer pre-soak as the rest of the water gets to 201.

This method is near no extra effort. So I think my feedback to Joe would be........ add in a program option to let us choose a pre-soak temp! :-)

It's a simple change to the software that would help the few of us with bloom issues get past it.

To go the extra mile, maybe make the pre-soak release time be programmable (ie: 8 second, 10 second, 15 second of water released).

Received my Brazen and so far it's exceeding my expectations, which were very high.

One comment regarding the "skunky plastic" smell mentioned above. After about 5 full pot water only cycles after unboxing I was also still smelling a very strong and unpleasant plastic odor in the carafe and the brew basket. My first pot of coffee on day 1 was undrinkable, and the plastic taste persisted in my mouth for several hours. I decided to try simply airing it out, so for a second time I washed all removable parts with hot soapy water, and spread them out to dry overnight. Next morning I made a pot of coffee and to my delight there was no plastic smell or taste at all. Been brewing 1-2 pots per day since and no hint of plastic. I've also been leaving the brew basket and carafe top in the dish drainer, and turning the reservoir top upside down to allow any possible residual plastic aromatics to evaporate.

End result is my coffee life has been re-invigorated. Still numerous test adjustments to try but it seems clear already this is an exceptional, and game-changing brewer.

My BraZen has stopped brewing. The water does not heat and I am seeing an E0 error on the display. The manual doesn't mention this error. I have contacted tech support, but wanted to see if anyone else had been having issues and may know how to resolve.

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